If games were scored based on 'best use of Bonnie Tyler', Saints Row: The Third would be getting top marks across the board. Replace Bonnie Tyler with Kanye West and the same thing applies. It's impossible to stress just how exhilarating it is to dive out of a helicopter onto the roof of a luxury condo, while 'The Power' plays from an unseen sound system. Saints Row 3 is filled with moments like this; over the top, bombastic setpieces that make other games look pedestrian, ramping up the action and the silliness to eleven. It can get away with it, after all. Saints Row isn't trying to tell a sensible crime story, nor is it grounded in any sort of reality. Its deliberately a video game. Saints Row knows that, in a game, sometimes you just want to let loose. It's a playground, and it revels in it.

The Saints have come a long way since Stillwater. The third outing sees the murderous gang as celebrities, endorsing products and signing movie deals. It's all very gloriously stupid. There's an element of cultural satire here, of course, but it's fleeting, brief knowing nods amidst the jet planes and tank shells and armies of luchadores. It begins with a bank heist in which the Saints, disguised as themselves, attempt to loot an entire vault. Within 15 minutes you're on a plane, then falling out a plane, then diving back through the plane as it crashes, shooting guys out the air and dodging falling cars. And this is just the introductory level.

However, after this section, you're brought back hard down to earth. Touching down in Steelport, the Saints' new home for the third outing, it's all a little too familiar initially. There are properties to buy, clothes to try on and Activities to complete. Activities, often the highlight of previous Saints Row titles, initially suggest the game might be a tad disappointing. Bar a couple of exceptions, they're the activities you've already seen before if you've played the other two games, either with minor variants (Escort now has you driving a tiger around, for example) or lifted entirely wholesale. A new activity in the form of Professor Genki's Super Ethical Reality Climax--a reality show in which you're tasked with killing mascots on a timer and with a combo meter--mixes things up a little but it's mostly rather familiar.

The main missions, too, proceed in a slightly misleading manner. For every explosive setpiece, there are a couple mandatory missions that make you play a familiar Activity; selling lunch boxes with Pierce, rescuing prostitutes for Limos, getting hit by as many cars as possible. It's easy to think, at first, that very little has changed. This isn't entirely untrue, but it's also a lot less of a problem than it initially appears.

Related Articles

Unlike in previous Saints Row games, the main campaign missions are really the focus here. After the early dip, the fun comes thick and fast, with the game throwing pretty much everything it can at you, from high speed chases to zombies to Burt Reynolds. This time, rather than having Steelport's gangs separated out into entirely standalone quest lines, the plot follows one primary strand, presenting the gangs as one larger group (here called The Syndicate) rather than separate entities. This allows the game more scope to mix up the themes; while you're often given a choice of multiple missions to do, they usually cut off before any major plot points, with key sequences playing out in a prescribed order. Certain missions also allow you to make a choice which generally affects which reward you'll receive for completing them. They don't have a huge bearing on the story aside from the final choice (which you can replay anyway) but it's a nice touch in allowing you to shape the playpen you want.

The further the game goes on, the better it gets. No longer restricted by having to earn Respect to complete missions, you now earn rewards based on your respect level. These act as bonuses or provide upgraded weapons and abilities, and the more you earn the more fun the game becomes. Trying to do a lot of things while the story is at an early stage leaves you feeling restricted, but go with the narrative flow and eventually the optional extras, the gang territories to take over, the brawls to trigger, become a lot more fun with more tools at your disposal. It's fun in the first place, but doesn't quite have the edge its predecessor did until things really kick off. But when they do, Saints Row: The Third becomes what it should be; a vast, expansive playground packed with things to do, mayhem to cause and people to punch into giblets.

It's a game about letting you have as much fun as you can, and after the initial few hours it really comes into its own. Sure, you have to earn the right to fully play around, and it's perhaps a misstep that it doesn't make its structure quite as clear as it could (at least to players of previous Saints Row games) but it's never boring, just a little too reminiscent of the first two games. The humour, though, is a welcome bit of familiarity. It's not clever, or high brow, but it's exceptionally silly and puts fun above all else. There are a couple of questionable sections, all missions that involve the singing pimp Zimos, but for the most part Saints Row: The Third nails its tone without alienating any portion of its audience. No mean feat in a game that features a giant purple dildo as a weapon.

It's heavy on the action, too, particularly in the third act when a certain new enemy type rolls up, and the shooting is robust and enjoyable to compensate. There's a vast array of weapons, ranging from assault rifles to airstrikes, chainsaws and satchel charges. Vehicles, too, are in plentiful supply. My tricked out bright pink moped, the Widowmaker, was a highlight, but there are street cleaning vehicles, numerous sports cars, tanks, APCs, helicopters, fighter jets... in fact, some of The Third's best moments involve taking to the air. Vehicle handling is tight and unrealistic, designed not to test your driving ability but simply to allow you to have as much fun as possible powersliding around the city, smashing your way through everything in your path. It's a game about destruction, and every element of its gameplay mirrors this. And once you have all the toys to play with, everything at your disposal, Saints Row: The Third is pretty much unrivalled in terms of pure, explosive sandbox fun.

Character customisation makes a welcome return too, with numerous outfits and tattoos to purchase and the ability to restructure your character's appearance at a very low (in-game) financial cost, a considerable reduction over the plastic surgeon in Saints Row 2. Messing around with your character, dressing him or her up, then taking them onto the mean streets of Steelport is as much of a draw as the action itself. Vehicle customisation is also available, allowing you to improve the performance and change the look of most of the game's cars and bikes.

Then there's the coop mode, of course, allowing a friend to join you on your murderous Steelport rampage. And a horde-type mode (here called Whored Mode) which is a surprising amount of fun, throwing predefined mission modifiers at you in fairly creative ways. Taking on hordes of giant strippers while armed with a katana, destroying some of the game's large Brute enemies in a tank, etcetera. It's all typically ridiculous, but funnier and more fast-paced than a lot of recent Horde modes, and an enjoyable extra addition.

Saints Row: The Third, then, perhaps doesn't feel quite as fresh as its predecessor in certain ways, but in others it kicks everything up a notch. It's certainly a better game, just for those of us who played the last game to death, there's not quite as much here to wow us. But the campaign is by far the best of the three, and even with the reused Activities and slightly familiar feel, Saints Row remains one of gaming's best, most enjoyable and most ludicrous playgrounds. It's not big, it's not clever, but it sure is a huge amount of fun.